Tajik

Last Updated: 2020-07-02

Background

Language Family: Indo-European / Indo-Iranian / Iranian / Western / Southwestern / Persian

• Tajik is predominantly spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Phonology

Consonants

• Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael (2009) argue for /ɽ/ rather than /r/ (p. 4).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d			k ɡ	q	ʔ
Affricates			tʃ dʒ
Fricatives	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ			χ ʁ	h
Nasals	m	n
Trills		r
Approximants		l		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless, whereas those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Some older sources describe /iː/ as a separate phoneme, but modern scholars tend to argue that length is wholly non-contrastive in Tajik (Ido 2005, 11).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ɵ	ɔ
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
а	/a/
б	/b/
в	/v/
г	/ɡ/
ғ	/ʁ/
д	/d/
е	/e/; /je/	/je/: word-initially (Baizoyev, Azim and Hayward, John 2004, 2)
ё	/jɔ/
ж	/ʒ/
з	/z/
и	/i/
ӣ	/i/	word-finally (Baizoyev, Azim and Hayward, John 2004, 2)
й	/j/
к	/k/
қ	/q/
л	/l/
м	/m/
н	/n/
о	/ɔ/
п	/p/
р	/r/
с	/s/
т	/t/
у	/u/
ӯ	/ɵ/
ф	/f/
х	/χ/
ҳ	/h/
ч	/tʃ/
ҷ	/dʒ/
ш	/ʃ/
ъ	/ʔ/
э	/e/	used word-initially where initial glides are absent (Baizoyev, Azim and Hayward, John 2004, 2)
ю	/ju/
я	/ja/

Syllable Structure

• Tajik has a (C)V(C)(C) syllable structure (Ido 2005, 14).

Lenition Rules

• Loanwords with the affricate /ts/ typically reduce it to /s/ (Ido 2005, 13).
• /q/ spirantizes in some words (ibid.).
• The middle consonant is often deleted in three-consonant clusters (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 7).
• However, sometimes [ə] is inserted between the second and third consonant instead (ibid.).
• In word-final consonant clusters, the last consonant is sometimes deleted (ibid.).
• /ʔ/ deletes intervocalically; /v/ does as well, if the vowels are identical (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 8).
• Word-final /h/ deletes (ibid.).

Misc. Rules

• Obstruents devoice word-finally (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 3).
• Consonant clusters assimilate to the voicing of the final one (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 3).
• /a u i/ reduce to [ə] in unstressed syllables (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 6).
• /n/ assimilates to the place of following bilabials (Ido 2005, 13; Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 7).
• Glides, typically /j/, are often added between vowel clusters (Khojayori, Nasrullo and Thompson, Mikael 2009, 8; Ido 2005, 12).

References

Baizoyev, Azim, and Hayward, John. 2004. A Beginner’s Guide to Tajiki. Routledge Curzon.

Ido, Shinji. 2005. Tajik. Lincom Europa.

Khojayori, Nasrullo, and Thompson, Mikael. 2009. Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Georgetown University Press.